Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Spinster by Kate Bolick
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Nature has many faces. It can be peaceful and restorative. It can be forbidding and formidable. Or it can be anything in between these two extremes. In our mostly urban suburban society, we don't often find ourselves in untouched nature. We have to make the effort to leave our cities and towns and find the wilderness for ourselves. But being out in nature does not always go as planned, and it is not always as untouched and safe as we think, as the characters in Nina Revoyr's novel Lost Canyon discovered.

Intense LA fitness instructor Tracy plans to lead a challenging backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Three of her most dedicated students choose to join her on the trek. Each of them has a different reason for wanting this short retreat into the wild where they anticipate pushing themselves and perhaps finding answers to some of the questions in their lives. Gwen is an African American woman who works with under-served kids in Watts. She is haunted by the recent death of one of her students, a likable young man who was incredibly promising. Of the three of Tracy's students, she is probably the least fit and she worries that the whole trip might be beyond her physically. Oscar is a single father, Latino real estate agent who rode the real estate wave to major success but didn't get out before the wave came crashing down. Now he's likely to lose his shirt. He helped to gentrify the area in which he lives, only now questioning the wisdom and community-wide impact of doing that. Todd is a successful lawyer, the privileged white male of the bunch. His wife comes from money and he struggles to find happiness in the lifestyle she demands, feeling alienated not only from her but from his own children as well. Tracy will push all three of these very different people to the edge physically but they will all be pushed to the edge mentally as well.

When the quartet first meet, they form snap first impressions, based on their own superficial and preconceived ideas of race and class, their discomfort with each others' differences very evident. Each person in this disparate group is uncertain about venturing into the wilderness for a weekend with people so unlike each of them. But each also decides that it is for the short term and on a well traveled trail so they tuck away their misgivings and head off together. An encounter at a small store just before the park only serves to highlight the differences amongst the group, with some catching the uncomfortable racist undertones of the conversation and others missing it entirely. Once inside the park they are dismayed to discover that the route Tracy had planned for them is closed because of fires. A bit daunted, they eventually agree to an un-maintained, un-patrolled, and remote route that is only found on an old handwritten map of the park. They are perhaps seduced by Tracy's reckless overconfidence and a blind faith that she will not lead them into danger and so they head out.

The first part of the book introduces each of the characters, establishing their unique and differing back stories. The character exposition is slow but necessary in forming full pictures of each person and what led them to this life-altering trip. The narration alternates its focus on Gwen, Oscar, and Todd, leaving only Tracy to remain an enigma. Starting as a tale of people looking for something inside themselves in nature, the story quickly changes course. The tension escalates; suspense, a rising sense of uneasiness, and, finally, terror pervade the tale as the characters stumble into a frightening situation where they are not wanted. It is when the novel becomes a desperate tale of survival that each of the characters becomes fully realized and well rounded. As they find the reserves of strength within themselves, they also acknowledge fortitude in their fellows. Revoyr's decision to place her characters in the wilderness where they are forced to rely on each other and work together to escape an adventure that is suddenly life or death is a surprisingly successful way in which to address issues of racism and classism in unusual visceral and immediate ways. The ending is a bit abrupt and the symbolism of the unsolved mystery remained unclear to me but overall, this is a thrilling read which offers a hopeful pocket of humanity that survives and triumphs over both arduous and challenging natural conditions and the worst that human beings can throw at each other.

Thanks to the publisher and LibraryThing Early readers for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Some of the most memorable characters in literature are unlikable. Humbert Humbert in Lolita is probably the best well known. He's loathsome and vile and yet the book is a masterpiece, stunning and well-written. But it's incredibly difficult to write a book with a deplorable main character and still keep readers engaged. Matt Sumell's novel, Making Nice, tries to accomplish this feat but unfortunately misses by a wide mark.

Alby is angry at everyone and everything. He is reeling from the death of his mother from cancer and he can't do anything but lash out at others and the unfairness of the world. He is a nasty, angry, abusive young man who is clearly lost but unwilling and unable to find himself. He works several dead end jobs. Somehow he finds women willing to endure his brutishness and borderline misogyny and to go home with him. His family doesn't like him. Even his mother didn't seem to like him much before her death. But the bigger problem is that the reader doesn't like him either. Alby may be flailing, struggling with his future, and projecting a persona crafted by extreme grief, but he's crass and antagonistic and those two traits seem to stem from well before his mother's death, not just coming as a result of it.

The novel is told as a series of vignettes about his struggle with life and grief and understanding. It's first person narration is disjointed and random, a sort of stream of consciousness, and even from his own self-pitying, self-congratulatory perspective, he comes across as horrible from childhood onward. There was an occasional flash of humor but those flashes were so insubstantial compared to the rest of the distasteful portrayal as to be almost meaningless. Other reviewers have seen much more redemption in these pages than I did. Certainly people react to grief in various ways and this might be a very valid, if unpleasant way. While I guess I am glad I persevered to the end for this one because I managed to find a shred of sympathy for Alby on the last page, ultimately he wasn't a character with whom I really wanted to spend any time.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Just because numerous articles and books have been published debunking the myth of having it all, doesn't mean that people don't still try, sometimes out of necessity. But there is no doubt that this quest is stressful and hard, hectic and all-consuming. Elisabeth Egan's debut novel, A Window Opens, is the tale of one woman's need to try and make it work for herself and her family.

Alice Pearse is the happily married mother of three. She has a relaxed part time job reviewing books for a women's magazine that allows her to still be a part of the PTA crowd. Her beloved parents live quite close and she has a wonderful babysitter to help her on days she's working. Her husband Nicholas is a lawyer at a high powered firm and they all seem relatively content with their lives. That is, until Nicholas finds out he won't be making partner at his firm and decides that he's going to start his own small legal practice. Worried about what this means for them financially, Alice starts to look for full time work to keep the family afloat while Nicholas slowly builds a client base. She lucks into a job that seems like a book lover's dream: content manager at startup Scroll, a company intent on creating an entirely new bookstore experience. Alice will be on the ground floor of something truly innovative and she is one of the people who gets the opportunity to find and curate the collection of books that will be available in these amazing sounding literary lounges. The only downside seems to be the very real threat these e-book and first edition p-books (that's Scroll speak for paper book) reading rooms pose to traditional brick and mortar independent bookstores. But Alice can look past that; she has to, doesn't she?

Setting aside the troubling fact that the company's parent is a monolithic retail mall developer, Alice is initially excited about the vision of Scroll and its focus on the whole reading experience. Even if she is a good decade older than most of the employees and she smirks at the ridiculous jargon they all use, she is fully invested in her job. As a matter of fact, she's so invested that she feels she's missing out on the home front. And she is. She's so attached to her phone, tied to her emails, and consumed by her job that she barely sees what's going on with her kids, she misses a doctor's appointment where her father discovers that his throat cancer has reoccurred, and she misses the fact that her husband is suddenly drinking too much as a way to alleviate his own stress. Meanwhile, Scroll is not designed to accommodate a work life balance and its clearly stated intentions are changing from what they once were, morphing at the speed of light to something that isn't quite as aligned with Alice's beliefs as it once was. Alice is frazzled and unhappy, stuck in a juggling act that just serves to make her feel terrible. Things must come to a head and Alice has to decide just how far she can stray from her ideals before she no longer likes herself and how much her family's and her own happiness means to her.

Alice is an appealing character who just wants to do the best thing for her family and to be happy. She is pulled in a million different directions and her thoughts and feelings on the push and pull are incredibly realistic. Egan's depiction of the book world, the flux that it is in, and the threat of huge, impersonal corporations which hire enthusiastic people, only to dismiss their very valid suggestions and concerns about the industry, is spot on. There is much that is heartbreaking here, a struggle to adjust, terminal cancer, and the almost too late realization of what is most important in our lives. Egan doesn't condemn anyone for their choices but she clearly explains the compromises that we all have to make and the cost those compromises can bring. Nicholas is a frustrating character, unable to slide into the role in which Alice served him for years and resentful that she needed him to do that. I wanted to like him for the loving things he did but instead he made me angry for his lack of realization about how his decision to start his own firm and to burn his bridges at the old place would seismically shift his family and all the roles, his included, in it. The narrative pacing is a little uneven in places, with definite slowdowns in the tale. There are brief light moments but this is not really a funny book; it is far more serious than it initially seems. It's an examination of the lives we build, the trade-offs we make, and finding the balance we can live with, even if that balance will never be 50/50. It's sad but ultimately hopeful and incredibly relate-able.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

I have a fascination for snow and ice. I don't particularly want to live in them full time (or even beyond the first driveway shoveling, if truth be told) but there's something very appealing about them in the abstract. Antarctica is on my bucket list. So are those ice hotels in Finland or Sweden. I am captivated by books about polar expeditions and their fates. The frozen North (or South) land calls to me. So I was fully prepared for Cormac James' newest novel, The Surfacing, a tale about a ship and its crew searching for the lost Franklin expedition to enchant me. I wanted to love this book in all its frozen glory. Unfortunately, it made me feel beaten down, like I always felt after a long, grueling winter when spring should be imminent but is still out of sight, hidden by dirty, monotonous banks of snow.

In 1850, a fleet of ships headed for the Arctic in a bid to find and possibly even rescue the lost Franklin expedition. One of the ships searching, the Impetus, needed repairs after a short trip north and had to return to Greenland for a time. While the ship is in harbor, the first officer, Richard Morgan, thinks little of a dalliance with the governor's sister, Kitty. But when the ship's captain decides to go out searching again despite it being late in the season for safe travels, Kitty is discovered as a stowaway. And as the long months of the search drag on, it is clear that she is pregnant with Morgan's child. As Morgan comes to grips with what this means both in practical terms and for him emotionally, the Impetus is slowly and irrevocably encased in the ice pack, moving ever further north away from freedom and open water, frozen solid into a moving sheet of solid white.

The book is written as a series of ship's log or journal entries but from a third person perspective, which is a little disconcerting, and there is no punctuation setting off dialogue from exposition. It is separated into two different sections: before the birth of the baby and after with a gap of almost a year in between the two. Morgan as a main character is coming to grips with fatherhood at a time when the only other thing occupying the crew is the daily slog of survival in such a harsh and unforgiving landscape. He is hard to know but is better fleshed out than the other characters, who took a very long time to show any signs of individuality. Without distinguishing characteristics, it is hard for the reader to care about them. Much of the book is like this, with well-constructed passages that unfortunately leave the reader nothing but numb. The interactions between the crew members are reduced to a line here or there, keeping them all distant despite the situation. The lack of plot makes it a struggle to stay engaged with the story and even as a contemplative reflection on fatherhood, the book doesn't quite deliver. The story of Morgan coming to cherish his son might have been more engaging had the year's gap, which allowed the hard work of building this development organically to be avoided, not been present. The story feels minimal and spare and yet still too long what with the unemotional tone and the completely unresolved ending. Perhaps I expected something different from this than the author intended but despite my initial eagerness, rather than a harrowing tale of life in extremis, I found this to be a mostly tedious and disappointing read.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

We dropped our oldest child W. off at college on Saturday. For weeks leading up to the drop off, people would ask me how I was handling it. I think I shocked them when I said I was fine with it. But I was. I couldn't stop smiling. Not because a child was leaving the nest and our grocery bills would become more reasonable but because I was so excited for him to experience college. Other friends were counting down each "last thing" they'd have with their college bound child. I flat ignored all of that. I mean why be sad before you have to be (not that I had any intention of being sad anyway)? I didn't cry when he started school and I didn't cry when he graduated so I was pretty sure I wasn't going to cry when we dropped him off on his latest and greatest adventure.

Because of his dorm and floor, he was assigned a 7:30 am move in time. I am not a morning person. W. is not a morning person. D. (hubby and dad) is the only one who is a morning person so he was completely perplexed when I insisted that we needed to get a hotel room for the night before move in. His argument was that the school is a mere hour and a half from us. My argument was that no one wants to wake me up to drive somewhere at 5 am if they value their life. We got a hotel room. The plan was to drive up sometime late afternoon and be well rested for the next morning. But in the time honored tradition of clueless teenagers everywhere, W. not only wasn't ready to leave at a reasonable hour, he didn't help me pack up all of the stuff that had taken up residence on the dining room table or help me pack the car, but he invited those friends who hadn't yet left for college themselves to come over and hang out and play video games for hours. He did pack up the clothes he wanted to take before they arrived though (more on this later), so there's that. After we fed the additional teenagers one last dinner and finally shooed them out the door, I finished packing up the car, we hopped in, and headed out. It was almost 11 pm when we got to the hotel. W. rolled himself out of the car, directly into a bed, and off to sleep. Apparently it's weird that I wanted him to be all jazzed up, chatty, and excited about the next day.

The next morning we rallied early in hopes that we wouldn't have to wait in line to unload his stuff. And we didn't. Even better, we had to carry nothing at all up to his fourth floor room. A welcome home team of students, faculty, and staff greeted us at the curb, unloaded the car, and whisked it all up to his room, where his roommate was already unpacking. Seeing the mound of stuff that the roommate brought made me worry that we didn't have enough. But in the weeks prior, whenever I asked him about some article listed on every college necessity list ever, he'd say he didn't need it. And I figured he was in charge. If he came to regret it later, I could always say "I told you so" because that is something I do really, really well. (Well, at least on the rare occasions that my children forget what I've taught them about the fact that I'm always right.) But seriously, the mountain of stuff his roommate had compared to what he had was comical. And they are in the smallest possible room that two people can inhabit together without sharing a bed. (It looks bigger in the picture than it actually is.) But W. still seemed completely unperturbed by his lack of stuff. He unpacked his clothes, jamming them into his drawers, and declared himself done. Perhaps he's got a future calling writing the minimalist list version of what to take to college.

Meanwhile, anal retentive mom (that would be me, for anyone in doubt), unpacked and organized everything else. (I did refrain from alphabetizing anything but only with the greatest difficulty.) I asked nicely if I could hang up the shirts he'd squashed into the drawer but was summarily told no. I asked why we'd bought hangers then and he said he didn't know. Yes, you've guessed it, there was no way I was going to cry about leaving him when he was being an ornery little twit. He was grumpy. I was grumpy. D. left the room "to stay out of the way," wisely fleeing to check out the rest of the hall and dorm. Instead of continuing to argue (the roommate was arguing with his mom too so either it was contagious or this is one of those unpleasant things they don't warn you about dropping your kid off at college, kind of like no one tells you about the gross body after affects of giving birth), we found D. and went off to get breakfast. Food helped the hangry a lot.

Since W.'s side of the room was mostly handled by then, we made a run to buy the very few things we'd forgotten (or never knew he'd need/want). One extra pillow, an HDMI cord, an over the door hook, an ethernet cable, and a plethora of snacks and soda later and we were back in the room. Realizing that there was nowhere to store the snacks (it really is a tiny room), I made the sneaky suggestion that if he let me hang up his shirts, that would free up one of his three dresser drawers to become a snack drawer. He thought that was a genius idea. I'm not only always right, I pretty much always get my way. ;-) And since he was letting me muck about in the dresser, I opened both other drawers as well and folded his shorts and pants. Remember when I said he packed his own clothes? The child packed three pairs of athletic shorts, one pair of cargo shorts, two pairs of jeans, and two pairs of dress pants. He had a tiny stack of underwear and about 5 pairs of socks. I'm fairly certain my home laundry lessons fell on deaf ears so this could be interesting. He's either going to be filthy, become a nudist, or he's going to learn how to do laundry pretty quickly since this will have to last him at least six weeks until Family Weekend. I've been practicing though and I can confidently say: not my problem.

W. is a bit of an introvert so he wasn't interested in wandering down his hall to meet people. Instead he plopped his cheesehead on and spun around in his desk chair. When asked what he was doing, he said that if he wore the cheesehead, it might inspire other people to initiate a conversation with him so he didn't have to. Bless his dorky little Packer backer heart! We sat in his room for a while and no one who walked by mentioned the large wedge of cheese he was wearing so I suggested we get out and explore a bit. W. and D. found the pool table in the main lounge area and D. proceeded to school W. in a game. Almost as soon as the game ended, W. looked at me and said, "You know, I think you're the only parents who are finished unpacking their kid who are still here." I took that as a rather unsubtle hint (what a poor loser!) so we hugged him and left after checking to see if he wanted us to come back for dinner (no) or for convocation the next morning (yes).

Convocation was billed as business casual. Pretty much everyone we saw was dressed nicely. I even wore a dress. When W. came downstairs to meet us for breakfast before the ceremony, he was wearing a button down shirt and dress pants so you'd think he got the memo, right? But remember when he crumpled up all of his things in his drawer and then snapped at me for wanting to hang them? Yeah, he looked like he'd slept in his clothes. Not one other kid we passed looked as schlumpy as my kid. The wrinkles in his shirt had wrinkles. And he didn't have it tucked in. This was apparently to hide the fact that he managed to break his belt while getting dressed. As we walked along, D. noticed that W. was also wearing white athletic socks with his khakis and dress shoes. Seems he forgot to pack dress socks too. And he hadn't shaved. Classy. It's no wonder that when I looked at the photos of convocation later, my kid is not in a single one.

At the ceremony, the school gave each freshman (even the ones who looked like they were rag pickers like my kid) an HPU blanket and the president told them that they were not to keep it but to give it to that person who had been the most influential in getting them to college, the person who had always wrapped them up with love and encouragement. I figured I was a shoe-in for the blanket. Brat grinned and told me to give it to the dog. (We all know it's mine now anyway.) I gave him the cheese he had inadvertently left at home (yes, we're a weird family but we love our cheese and he has a thing for smoked gouda with bacon which is ridiculously hard to find around here), we hugged him, and headed home. We didn't want to be the last parents standing when the school had specifically said that parents should leave as soon as convocation was over. That was the last we heard from the boy until this morning when he texted me a selfie of himself on his first day of classes. (As sweet as this sounds, know that the university suggested it to the kids. At least he went along with it, unlike the suggestion the president made to all of them to call their mothers every day to tell them that their kid loved them--and to call their fathers once a week to ask for money.) For now I'll assume that no news is good news and D. assures me that W. will most definitely call when he needs money. I have no doubt.

I found it hard to sleep those first nights with him gone. In the past when he's been out at night, I have had the reassurance of the door chime waking me up to let me know he's home safe and sound. Saturday night and every night since then, that chime has never sounded and I think that's why I've tossed and turned. It's a huge change for him and for me. Maybe bigger for me. And I will admit to having clicked through every last picture the school took of each event during welcome weekend looking for my child. But he's either still sporting hopelessly wrinkled clothing (I wouldn't take a picture of that either) or he's decided to taunt me by staying as far as possible from any cameras because he doesn't appear in a single one. Seriously, is it too much to ask for him to just be on the outskirts of even one picture?!

So how am I doing with all if this? Well, I didn't cry at any point but I have to say it is a bit disorienting for me to have such a huge piece of my heart building a life away from me after 18 and a half years of building it with me. But I think I'm doing okay. Ask me again next year when another big chunk of my heart goes off to build her life elsewhere too. For 18 years W. has been my baby. Now he's his own person. I hope we've done a good job with him and I hope he's having the time of his life. I also hope he remembers to call home sometime soon!

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

So many things can trigger our memories. Clothing in particular seems to hold our memories in the very weave of its fabric. Pull out a school picture and remember how much you used to love that oversized, geometric-print sweater in the photo and be prepared for the memories of seventh grade to come flooding in. Look in your closet at the cream colored sweater with pearl beading that you wore to Homecoming your junior year of high school when the theme was black and white. Slip on (or just try to if pregnancies have made your feet grow) the small, embellished heels that matched the bodice of your wedding dress which you wore for your wedding. Each of these articles of clothing holds not just the memory of the day they were worn but also remembrances of so much of that time in your life, the things you did, the places you went, and the people you loved. In Mary Pflum Peterson's life, it is the white dresses of christening, confirmation, graduation, marriage, and other significant life events that pull the stories from her in White Dresses, a memoir of her mother and herself.

Opening with Mary's desperate need to find the white dresses that embodied her mother's love for her amidst the dirt and hoarded detritus of her childhood home, the dresses are talismans. Each chapter opens with a brief memory of the significant day one of the white dresses was worn but then expands outward to describe so much more. Despite all of the promise of the celebratory dresses, neither Anne Diener Pflum nor Mary Pflum Peterson had the happiest of childhoods. Little Anne was an interloper in her parents’ marriage, merely a tangible sign of her mother’s deep passion for her father. Toward her children, Anne’s mother was cold and un-maternal and Anne spent her entire life striving to earn her mother’s love. Her emotionally barren childhood, followed by several emotionally abusive years as a nun and a hollow, failed marriage to an unhappy and volatile closeted gay man formed her into the mother that Mary Pflum Peterson knew. Mary was a product of this unhappy marriage and she grew up not only with the toxicity of their mistakes, confusion, and anger but with their eventual divorce and her mother’s financial struggle in a home that started off merely cluttered and dirty but became completely buried under mountains of things and filthy without being able to do anything about it. Even as Anne remained trapped with her own demons, she pushed Mary to go to college and find the success that she has today even as Anne worried that by doing so Mary would leave her behind. Their relationship was a complex and complicated one marked by deep love and failure, pride and frustration.

Peterson tells her mother's story and her own here through these special white dresses. She uncovers secrets and things she couldn't have understood about her mother at the time. She always knew that something was wrong but not the extent of it. Her recounting of history is unvarnished and honest, a loving tribute to a warm and caring mother who was forever haunted by a lack she felt her entire life. The symbolism of the twelve white dresses, their potential and possibilities, their announcement of a new beginning are poignant indeed when contrasted with the disappointments that mar many of the occasions they mark or the aftermath of those occasions. But if Anne Diener Pflum's life was crippled by depression and her later hoarding, if it was so unhappy despite its potential and the potential of all those white dress new beginnings, she gave her daughter a rare gift in her own set of white dresses: that of freedom and, ultimately, of the happiness she herself never found. Peterson writes sensitively about her mother, the past, and growing up as her mother's daughter. She captures the strong bond and love between them even as she is unable to help her mother overcome her own demons. The narrative structure is different and an interesting concept well handled. It is a little slow to start and the pain and lovelessness of Anne's upbringing is hard to witness, as is her ashamed descent into hoarding. But the love that shines through the writing and the well-researched evenhanded balance with which Peterson tells this family tale will draw the reader into this exquisite, painful memoir.

Amazon says this about the book: From a bright new talent comes this debut novel about a young woman who travels for the first time to her mother’s hometown, and gets sucked into the mystery that changed her family forever

Mattie Wallace has really screwed up this time. Broke and knocked up, she’s got all her worldly possessions crammed into six giant trash bags, and nowhere to go. Try as she might, Mattie can no longer deny that she really is turning into her mother, a broken alcoholic who never met a bad choice she didn’t make.

When Mattie gets news of a possible inheritance left by a grandmother she’s never met, she jumps at this one last chance to turn things around. Leaving the Florida Panhandle, she drives eight hundred miles to her mother’s birthplace—the tiny town of Gandy, Oklahoma. There, she soon learns that her mother remains a local mystery—a happy, talented teenager who inexplicably skipped town thirty-five years ago with nothing but the clothes on her back. But the girl they describe bears little resemblance to the damaged woman Mattie knew, and before long it becomes clear that something terrible happened to her mother, and it happened here. The harder Mattie digs for answers, the more obstacles she encounters. Giving up, however, isn’t an option. Uncovering what started her mother’s downward spiral might be the only way to stop her own.

Hilarious, gripping, and unexpectedly wise, The Art of Crash Landing is a poignant novel from an assured new voice.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

I must admit that I have a bread machine. It probably doesn't redeem me in any way to say that it is generally dusty with disuse either. I know that it is merely a shortcut for homemade bread and that it cannot come close to the delectable stuff made by hand in artisanal bakeries and the kitchens of home bakers but we all work with our own skills. And much as I'd love to actually learn to bake my own bread from scratch, I just don't see it in the cards for me, at least not on a regular basis, and certainly not as a passion. That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the skill that goes into making it or a gorgeous description of warm, yeasty bread with steam curling up from the torn bit of crust. Now I'm just making myself hungry! Judith Ryan Hendrick's newest novel, Baker's Blues, about a baker and her ex-husband, is the third in a trilogy that gets both bread making and the complications of love and relationships right.

Wynter Morrison owns a successful bakery in Los Angeles. She's somehow gotten away from making the bread herself, caught up in the logistics of owning the business rather than sinking her hands into the dough. She's been divorced from ex-husband Mac for several years but she is still thrown for a loop when she gets the early morning phone call that he has died unexpectedly. They share a long history and still cared for each other despite their divorce. Jumping back in time from the funeral and Mac's daughter's unreasonable anger at Wyn for her father's death, the novel turns to the past and the story of Wyn and Mac's marriage unraveling. Wyn works hard at her bakery and tries to support Mac, a best-selling author turning his book into a screenplay, as he does PR events and hits the party circuit. She misses the old, uncomplicated Mac she used to know, not certain of this slick and unhappy seeming version of himself. She wants him to open up and talk to her about his feelings, something he cannot do. In fact, he walks out on their marriage rather than face his demons or share his secrets. When Mac goes, Wyn has to find strength and meaning in herself again.

Opening the novel with Mac's death and then going back to plumb the depths of their relationship is very effective, allowing the reader to know that despite their divorce, Wyn's reaction to his death proves that neither Wyn nor Mac is a villain in the novel. The slow disintegration of their marriage and the reason behind it is incredibly emotional. Hendricks has drawn both Wyn's hurt frustration and Mac's deep despair and inability to stop sabotaging them very true to life. Wyn's character is hit with a confluence of terrible or life altering events all at once: Mac's desertion, the death of her beloved dog, an earthquake hitting Southern California, and her manager and friend leaving to go to school. It is no wonder that she's completely adrift or that she turns back to the slow art of creating, kneading, and baking bread as she tries to wrap her head around an unimaginable future. The majority of the novel is narrated by Wyn but there are several chapters where the perspective turns to the third person and the focus is on Mac. This gives the reader both Wyn's thoughts and reactions to Mac but also shows the depth of the depression crippling Mac's interpersonal relations and a well rounded explanation into the complexity of their love, which outlasts their marriage.

The novel is the final book in a trilogy but it easily stands on its own. Readers who start at the beginning with Bread Alone and continue with The Baker's Apprentice will already know some of the history that haunts Wyn and Mac and they will have a richer understanding of their relationships with many of the secondary characters but none of this knowledge is necessary to enjoy Baker's Blues. Although it tackles the hard topic of being depressed and living with someone who is depressed, there is still a warm and comfortable feel to the writing and the story. The reader is pulled along through the end of Wyn and Mac's marriage, knowing what is coming but still turning the pages to see how they get there and how Wyn will go on after Mac's death. There are a significant number of secondary plot lines here that compliment the main story arc. Be warned that the luscious descriptions of food and bread will have your stomach rumbling as you read. Sad and lovely, I recommend you read all three of the books but even just this one will do.

Monday, August 24, 2015

We moved our oldest son into college this week and before that I was running around trying to get all the last minute things that we seemed to have so much time to accomplish back in June finished in time to launch him in this new phase of his life. I did retreat into reading when it threatened to overwhelm me a bit. And now I need to sign up for a review-a-thon even more than I did before! This meme has been hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and I hope will be again one day.

Books I completed this past week are:

Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
Satisfaction by Andee Reilly
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Surfacing by Cormac James
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
Making Nice by Matt Sumell
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Spinster by Kate Bolick
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler

The idea of courtesans and concubines have always fascinated me with the way that they are often simultaneously given more knowledge and freedoms than other women and yet so dependent and constrained by their very position so this tale of a Chinese concubine whose sympathy for the West, cultivated on diplomatic trips with her husband, puts her in danger in a changing China is very appealing to me.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

I am not a particularly big Rolling Stones fan. I am also not a wild and spontaneous person. I am pretty conventional and settled. But this is why I read, to try on personas that are most decidedly not me. Sometimes it's fantastic to spend time with characters who are so different than I am and sometimes I just never get them. In Andee Reilly's novel, Satisfaction, one main character is a huge Rolling Stones fan who adores Mick Jagger and the other is a mother who has been running from her daughter and the complicated emotional relationship they've shared for years, two women so far outside my experience, I could only encounter them in fiction.

Ginny discovers that her husband has been cheating on her with a coworker. Needing to escape and think about whether or not she cares to try and salvage her marriage, she practically maxes out their credit card and buys tickets to all of the shows in the current Rolling Stones tour. Ginny's been a devoted fan since high school (which wasn't all that long ago actually, as she's only 22) and she has hopes that this solo trip following her obsession will help heal her heart. Along the way she meets Bree, a waitress at a diner in Arizona who is kind to her when she's not feeling well. Amazingly for such a normally staid young woman, Ginny is more than happy to invite Bree to come along on the road trip with her. A decade older than Ginny, Bree has her own set of baggage. She is also the veteran of an unhappy marriage but in her case, she's also got a teenaged daughter, Victoria, who goes to a private boarding school in Florida, idolizes her deceased father, and scorns the mother who abandoned her. Bree is complete spontaneity contrasted to Ginny's meticulous planning. As they drive, they share their pasts and their frustrations with each other, building a friendship, having adventures, and listening to the Stones.

Although Ginny is only 22, she comes across as much older, beaten down, and helpless in the life she created for herself. Bree's character is the less mature of the two, flighty, and scared of deep emotional commitment, even to her own child. It is only through Bree's unexpected caretaking of Ginny that she starts to connect and to face the mess she's made with her daughter and with the man she has loved for so long. Ginny, in turn needed to see Bree's breezy, devil may care attitude about life to recognize her own strength and desires for her future. While they are vital to each other's growth and transformation, their immediate friendship is not entirely believable. The novel is loaded with arcane Stones trivia, but despite Ginny's ultra-fandom, much of it feels forced into the narrative purely for information's sake. If it needs to be explained by the characters to make sure the reader gets it all, it probably isn't serving the story all that well, as was the case when Bree uses titles of many of the Stones' songs thrown together in a verbal collage of sorts to apologize to Ginny. The narrative pacing is uneven and the ending is abrupt. The bulk of the novel is composed of internal ruminations and emotional, repetitive conversations about their marriages and men while the plot itself is fairly thin. Although both women are looking for the courage to break out of the lives they've created and find the happiness they each deserve on their own terms, for some reason, it was hard for me as a reader to connect with them or to really feel invested in them.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

News has always been about getting "the scoop." Even now when news is pretty much instantaneous, we will find breaking news alerts or scrolls as each news outlet rushes to be the first to tell us about a new story or new development in something ongoing. In World War II, photographers and journalists couldn't beam their work to the world in the breath of a nanosecond but in a way, that made the desire to be the one to break a story or release the first photographs that much more consuming. Whoever got there first had the chance of immortality through the words and photos that would always define a seminal event for the waiting public. And one of the biggest coups of the war would be documenting the liberation of occupied Paris. Every correspondent and photographer working then knew it and wanted to be the one to file first. Meg Waite Clayton's newest novel, The Race For Paris, a decade in the writing, looks at the push to be the first in Paris not only as journalists but as female journalists who were not supposed to be anywhere near this enormous and significant event.

Jane is a "girl reporter" for a Nashville paper who has not been able to get any closer to the front in France than a field hospital. She is fairly resigned to her out-of-immediate-action post and the refusal of the CO to authorize her any further forward until Olivia James Harper arrives in camp. Liv is an AP photographer whose husband runs the New York Daily Press. She is not content to stay behind the action even though she and Jane file some emotionally wrenching stories and photos from the hospital that garner them acclaim from Eleanor Roosevelt herself. Citing other brave female journalists and photographers defying orders, Liv and Jane go AWOL, determined to make their way to the front and to join the race to Paris. Happening across a photographer named Fletcher who Liv knows thanks to his connection to her husband and who is working for British Intelligence, the three join forces as they slowly cross the destroyed and still contested French countryside.

With MPs after them, the trio weaves around, taking photographs and writing stories, documenting the slow drive toward the city. They encounter horror, carnage, and gunfire. They, like the troops, must wait for the clouds to clear so the planes can fly. They are slowed by the lack of gasoline just as the rest of the convoy heading to Paris is. They camp out in barns and the woods, exposed to the elements or in danger of bombing. They take risks and defy convention for the profession that drives them. In short, they endure all the things that the powers that be think to be beyond the capabilities and sensibilities of women. Both Liv and Jane slowly reveal pieces of their pasts, their personalities, and the things that drive them as they alternately rush onward and wait impatiently, determined not to be left behind.

The narrative is framed by a 1994 exhibit showcasing Liv's wartime photos and celebrating the release of a book collecting those images. A simple question about the dedication of the book pushes the narrative back into the past when those photos were being taken. Liv's character is a whirlwind of action and while Jane often comes across as the trusty sidekick, it is her character narrating the majority of the story, capturing them thumbing their noses at the professional road blocks thrown in their way, documenting their growing friendship and the different kinds of muddled, hopeless love that springs up in the trio, crafting the story of their push to Paris and beyond. Although Fletcher narrates some as well, his character is seemingly less driven, less ambitious, and less knowable than the women's. The narrative tension waxes and wanes with the forward movement of the troops interspersed by the long periods of waiting for action, just as in any actual war. But even a slackening of the tension doesn't keep the reader from turning the pages, wanting to know more about these women, who were inspired by a compilation of real women correspondents and photographers of the times. The book is thoroughly researched and well written with visually evocative passages painting the scene very clearly in the reader's mind's eye. It is a fascinating look at women who dared, who excelled at their chosen professions despite the socially designed obstructions thrown up at them. And it is a different view of the war, through the eyes of those covering it, the way that their reports shaped public morale, and what was ultimately covered and what was hidden. A quick and gripping tale, the reader will not necessarily be surprised by the climax but the pleasure really is in the getting there. Fans of WWII fiction and fans of well written, unusual historical fiction should definitely include this on their reading lists.

Amazon says this about the book: Kate Darling's enigmatic mother--a once-famous ballerina--has passed away, leaving Kate bereft. When her grandmother falls ill and bequeaths to Kate a small portrait of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Kate's mother, Kate uncovers a mystery that may upend everything she thought she knew.

Kate's journey to find the true identity of the woman in the portrait takes her to some of the world's most iconic and indulgent locales, revealing a love story that began in the wild 1920s and was disrupted by war and could now spark new love for Kate. Alternating between Kate's present-day hunt and voices from the past, THE BOOK OF LOST AND FOUND casts light on family secrets and love-both lost and found.

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Surfacing by Cormac James
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
Making Nice by Matt Sumell
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Spinster by Kate Bolick
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
The Race For Paris by Meg Waite Clayton

I am one--a food whore, that is, and in another life I'd love to work as a restaurant critic so I am completely attracted to this tale of a young woman who agrees to ghost write columns for a food critic who has lost his sense of taste.

About two women, one whose husband is cheating on her and one who abandoned her daughter, who come together on a Rolling Stones concert tour jag and offer each other something each has been missing: friendship. I am definitely intrigued by the rock tour road trip aspect of this one.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

We're in our usual countdown to school here what with trying to reenter our noraml lives after vacation, dance tryouts, voice lessons, and school supply shopping. We have soccer skills stuff and play tryouts looming. My to be reviewed stack has taken on its usual gargantuan, out of control after summer without consistent wifi shape (one that I rarely recover from, incidentally). But these are the things that I always expect at this time of year. School starts in just over one week, ya know. When I held up the books and summer reading projects to nag each of my children, the responses I got varied. One child has read his book but not touched his project. He doesn't get any extra points for having read more than one book from the list if he doesn't complete the project. One child is about half way through her book. She finds it boring and since there's no project associated with it, she fails to see the urgency. And one child said he can read his book in a day or less (he hasn't even touched it yet). This latter comment is true as all of my children are lucky enough to be fast readers like their mama.

But the child waiting to read his book still has to pack up all of his clothes and do the remaining bit of dorm room shopping with me too. He wants to spend his time saying goodbye to friends and lounging around rather than do any of this boring stuff, which includes reading a book not of his choosing. Yes, this year I have a chick leaving the nest for college. It's a big transition. For him and for me. This summer reading book is the last homework I'll nag him about doing. And I'm okay with that. I don't like nagging about homework anyway. But I sure do wish he'd get on it. Maybe he's trying to keep me focused on the book rather than on him leaving? I gotta say, it's working! Maybe I should focus on nagging his sister to do her own college applications and trust that the kid leaving home will manage to get done what he needs to get done. Or maybe I should let it all go and focus on my own ridiculous list of unreviewed books. Yeah, maybe that's what I'll do. (Ask me later how that's working for me--or just come back on Mondays and see if my list has shown any improvement or if it's still as out of hand as the weeds in the flower garden after me being in and out for the past two months.) I think I'm doing a pretty good job at letting him go. But this not reading the book thing is really getting my knickers in a knot. How do you handle big transitions like this? Do you focus on one small thing that just niggles like a splinter under the skin so that you have to poke at it over and over or are you laissez-faire about the whole thing? And yes, I get that it is typical of me to focus on the book rather than the other million and one unfinished items. But hey! I can't change who I am.

This past week I have been traveling all over in my books. I watched as two friends grew up in a small Southern town. I traveled across the country to rescue a dog from a dognapper. I learned about the Milwaukee food scene as a chef and a restaurant critic fell for each other. I sat at the anchor desk at a cable news station with a daytime anchor conflicted about the changing role of her job and her attraction to her co-anchor. I leanred about bread making in Seattle as a baker worked through an unexpected divorce. I followed the Allied troops on their push to liberate Paris as a female photographer and a female journalist raced to be the first to file from the newly free city. Now I am plunging twenty-seven stories through the air with a goldfish. Where have you been in your reading travels this past week?

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Islands are magical. If there's anywhere to go to heal emotionally, an island is the ideal. Barbara Delinsky's latest novel Sweet Salt Air, a novel of forgiveness and revelations, is set on an island off the coast of Maine, the perfect place for her characters to come together again and to build the relationships and lives they want.

Nicole has returned to her family cottage on Quinnipeague in order to get it ready to sell. She needs the break from the stresses of her life. Her husband Julian is a well-known surgeon who has been diagnosed with MS and has tried to keep his diagnosis a secret from his colleagues as well as his children from his first marriage, leaving Nicole the only person who knows and worries with him. So spending one last summer on the island, sorting through the house and writing a cookbook based on the luscious, local food available there, should be a release for her. Not wanting to do it alone, she calls and invites Charlotte, the best friend from whom she's been partly estranged for ten years but who used to spend summers with Nicole's family at the cottage, and suggests that Charlotte join her there. As Nicole, a food blogger, creates the recipes, she will rely on Charlotte, a celebrated journalist, to write the human interest tales about the people and the restaurants behind the recipes. This is a collaboration that Charlotte cannot refuse. But Charlotte has a secret that makes their reconciliation awkward at best. And Nicole isn't sharing about Julian's MS either, at least not at first.

As Nicole and Charlotte tiptoe around each other and the secrets they clearly aren't telling each other, they tentatively start to try to rebuild something of their old friendship. Nicole cooks amazing food as Charlotte roams the island interviewing people about their contributions to the local culinary scene. In the course of her research, Charlotte runs into Leo, the handsome, abrasive, loner son of the woman whose amazing herbs are the foundation for almost every tasty thing produced on Quinnipeague. Leo has his own reason for keeping to himself and warning Charlotte away from his land and his herbs but she's intrigued and just can't stay away from him. Meanwhile the tension between she and Nicole is growing until Nicole spills her secret. This revelation increases the power of Charlotte's secret and makes her decision whether or not to reveal it that much harder.

There are several different story lines going on throughout this book: Nicole's feelings about selling the family cottage in the aftermath of her father's death, her relationship with Julian, Charlotte's interest in Leo, the rekindling of Charlotte and Nicole's friendship, and Charlotte's secret. All of the story lines are emotionally weighted and the majority of them hinge on secrets that will eventually be shared. The major focus, of course, is on Charlotte and Nicole's lapsed friendship and the way that a secret festering for 10 years has kept them cordial but carefully held at arm's length instead of as close as they once were. In addition to the many secrets, there's a big moral dilemma involved that holds the potential to change the trajectory of the whole story. Some of these plot issues are very believable and others stretch credulity some. The pacing is consistent if a little slow; it is of the leisurely beach read variety rather than the can't put it down type. In the end though, it is a pleasant but not so very surprising beach read and astute readers will have guessed the unspoken long before it is revealed.

Friday, August 14, 2015

As we come up on an election year again, the cries about media bias will be louder than ever. And deservedly so. We are very much in an era where the news is no longer as unbiased as possible but instead panders to each channel's target audience. There was once a gravitas to the news. Now it's all about entertainment factor. These changes have swept through across the board and we as the public are not any better informed or knowledgeable as a result, in fact, we are poorer for it. Brigitte Quinn's debut novel, Anchored, about a female news anchor trying to get ahead at her cable news job, fight her attraction to her new co-anchor, and maintain her integrity all in the face of a changing focus at her channel gives readers an inside seat as the tenor of news changes from informative to politicized persuasion.

Barbara King is a popular daytime anchor at the Phoenix, a third place cable news channel with the tagline No Filters No Fluff. She's really just marking time until she can get a coveted prime time spot and then move back to the better respected networks. Her husband is a stock analyst who really wants to quit and be a poet and they have a young son who Barbara adores. She'd like another child eventually but doesn't want to derail her career. She is decidedly not thrilled to discover that the channel is bringing in a co-anchor to report with her but it quickly becomes obvious that she and Jack Stone, who is smart and sexy, mesh beautifully on camera. Their chemistry, respective looks and intelligence, combined with the perfect producer, come together to drive their ratings up and up. The on-air chemistry spills over into their off-air friendship and flirtation and soon Barbara is balancing her growing feelings for her television husband with her ambition and sense of fair play at a channel that is moving further and further from unbiased and climbing up the ratings chart as a result.

Set just before, during, and after September 11, this novel, a very thinly veiled tale of the ascendancy of Fox News, illustrates the shift the news industry underwent (which continues today) while also showcasing the backstabbing, cutthroat life of anchors. Barbara is painted as incredibly attractive, smart, and quick on her feet. Her insistence on remaining impartial as an anchor is obviously the deeply moral stance but her escalating crush on Jack makes her human rather than perfect. Jack comes across as boyishly appealing while the up and coming Sloane, Barbara's producing nemesis who rockets through the ranks at the station on her way to being in charge, is nothing but bad. She's portrayed one dimensionally as nasty, conniving, and greedy. The insider look at the television news industry is interesting for sure although the will they or won't they story line between Barbara and Jack is pretty predictable and cliched and the whole of the plot is less nuanced than might be hoped. A light and fairly superficial story about the media, ambition, and bias, those looking for a peek behind the television cameras, those who wonder how our news became less informative and more partisan, and those who want all of this wrapped up with sexual tension should enjoy the tale.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

When you sit down to plan for your future, the long term goal is almost always retirement, no matter what other shorter term goals you have along the way. People bandy about the age at which they want to retire, they invest with an eye to not having to work during their older years, they fantasize about what they'll do when they no longer have to put in a 9 to 5 day. But how many people really and truly find exactly what they expect when they do retire? It can be hard to fill all those once busy hours, especially for someone whose work defined him or her. Retirement is a huge new chapter in a life, one that can take some adjusting to. In Jean Davies Okimoto's newest novel, The Reinvention of Albert Paugh, the third in her Island Trilogy, Albert Paugh is wrestling with what his life is going to look like now that he's retired.

Al has been the much loved Vashon Island veterinarian for many years but after a heart attack, he sold his business and now finds himself adrift. He loved his job and the animals entrusted to his care but with all his new-found free time he finds himself skulking around outside his old clinic looking for changes the new vet has made and judging him for things that Al thinks are solely monetarily driven. He obviously needs to find other ways to occupy his time. It doesn't help that one day Al comes home from walking his beloved dog Bert to find that his wife has re-evaluated her own life (she's a cancer survivor) and wants a divorce. Now he's retired, wondering if his marriage was as passionless as his wife claimed, and has to find a new home. If anyone is in need of reinvention, it is Al.

He finds a rental on Baker's Beach, close to his dearest friend and in a small community of other caring neighbors. As Al adjusts to the demise of his marriage and the complete freedom he has from his wife Eleanor's strict dictates, he tries to decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life and to find meaning in something other than the work that he loved. He is naive and strangely helpless during this time of his life and he's an easy target for the casserole brigade since he is inherently kind. Although she is also a "woman of a certain age" who would make a good fit for Al, his new neighbor Bonnie is dealing with her own life changes and tragedies. But the two find themselves to be kindred spirits and strike up a lovely, supportive friendship as each faces down the upheavals and major life changes that the universe has thrown at them.

Al's character comes across as bewildered and a little lost for much of the novel. All the characters, from the elderly Martha Jane, to couple Howie and Mark, to Bonnie, are comfortable and easy, the only exception being the high strung Eleanor. These characterizations give the novel a gentle, almost old-fashioned feel. It does take Al a while to recognize how he should occupy his days, how to give himself meaning again and he is very much incapable of reading social cues, which can be very frustrating especially as he debates and second guesses so much. But that's fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Although this is the third in a trilogy, there is absolutely no need to be familiar with the first two books to read this one. This is a novel with a charming setting, kindly characters, a simple quandary or two, a heap of hope, and the promise that there is not only life but happiness and satisfaction in the later part of life.

For more information about Jean Okimoto Davies and the book, check out her website. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Sometimes plots are too far-fetched to be believable right from the get go. But we tend to love these crazy stories in movies and books. They make our own lives seem normal and also offer us a feel-good escape from that same normality. And when the unbelievable is wrapped together with a lovable dog, an overly organized museum employee, a kooky Irish actor, and a dognapper, well, that story becomes downright appealingly readable.

Rory O'Connor is an actor working part time as the visiting guest musician at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (although that's not what his visa authorizes him to do) when his boss, Sara Renault, has to let him go because of a lack of funding. Rory has a response unlike most people's. He leans across her desk and kisses Sara. This doesn't save his job but it does start a very promising relationship with the sexy Sara. And in the usual way of life, when one major thing happens, a whole cascade of things happen at the same time. Rory's Hollywood agent friend calls him just after his wonderful night with Sara to tell him about a part that is all but guaranteed to be his if can get his green card. To do this, he needs to get married. Completely impulsively and in an act that is certainly out of character for her, Sara offers to marry him. Although they've known each other for quite a while as work colleagues, their relationship is a new one and throwing a marriage, even one just for a green card, into the mix is sure to hit some road bumps. In Rory and Sara's case, the road bump is a lovable reddish dog named Cody. Sara loves Cody with her whole heart, devoting herself completely to her sweet, furry companion. Rory has a much less inclusive view of dogs. To him, they are pets, not family, and they shouldn't be the driving force behind your decisions. He likes Cody well enough but he certainly doesn't love her as he is coming to love his wife and the way that Sarah treats Cody makes him a bit mental.

Their differing ideas about caring for a dog come to a head when Rory is in fact offered the acting job, lead role in a tv series, and they need to move across the country from Boston to Los Angeles. Sara doesn't want to subject Cody to flying and plans out a careful driving itinerary instead. But when Sara has a job interview in California before the cross-country drive commences and then Cody is dognapped because of Rory, everything goes cockeyed and Rory must try and get his wife's dog back safely while learning to love Cody not just as Sara's dog but as his own.

The novel is narrated from Rory's point of view, giving a charming bit of the blarney tone to it. Rory is clearly frustrated by Sara's catering to what he considers a nice dog, but just a dog, and that comes through clearly, as does his giddiness and pure delight in this relationship and over this woman he's married. Sara is very much a stereotypical American dog lover although she is, at times, a little over the top (and this comes from a woman whose dog has always shared her bed). The first third of the book develops Rory and Sara's relationship and Rory and Cody's as well. The second and third sections focus on the dognapping and the crazy, madcap happenings along the way to fulfilling Rory's promise to Sara to get her dog back to her. Once in the second and third sections, the narrative takes off on a mad gallop until the reader comes to the resolution panting and breathless. There are bits that are easily predictable and a few occurrences that are over and above the unbelievable level of the rest of the tale but over all, this is a cute, offbeat, and funny story that will appeal to animal lovers in general and dog lovers in particular for sure.

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About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.